Trump’s racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash
President Donald Trump’s social media post featuring a video about election conspiracy theories and a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle has been deleted.
The Republican president’s Thursday night post was deleted Friday and blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady.
The deletion, a rare admission of a misstep by the White House, came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there was nothing offensive about the post. After calls for its removal for being racist — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously and it had been taken down.
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.
The latest:
How the White House defended the president’s social media video
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Leavitt said by text, referring to Disney’s 1994 feature film, which does not feature the range of jungle primates featured in the video the president posted.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
What was in the racist video Trump posted?
Nearly all of the 62-second clip, which was among dozens of Truth Social posts from Trump overnight, appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states as the 2020 presidential votes were tallied.
At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two primates, with the Obamas’ smiling faces imposed on them.
Those frames were taken from a separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.
New round of sanctions on Iran
Shortly after Friday’s talks broke, the Treasury and State Department in Washington announced a new round of sanctions on Iran targeting its energy sector.
The departments imposed penalties, including freezes on assets in U.S. jurisdictions, on 14 so-called “shadow fleet” of oil tankers that the U.S. says are used to try to evade sanctions as well as 15 trading firms and two business executives.
“Time and time again, the Iranian government has prioritized its destabilizing behavior over the safety and security of its own citizens, as demonstrated by the regime’s mass murder of peaceful protestors,” the State Department said in a statement. “The United States will continue to act against the network of shippers and traders involved in the transport and acquisition of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products, and petrochemical products, which constitutes the regime’s primary source of income.”
Trump’s racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash despite White House earlier defending it
President Donald Trump’s social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as racist.
The Republican president’s Thursday night post was deleted Friday and blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. The deletion, a rare admission of a misstep by the White House, came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal for being racist — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously and it had been taken down.
The post was part of a flurry of social media activity on Trump’s Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and a Trump attorney general from his first term finding no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome.
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.
